Four Girls, One Farm, One Hundred Years: Mascha Schilinski’s Acclaimed Century-Spanning Mosaic

A farm in the Altmark region. Four girls grow up there in four different periods: the 1910s, the 1940s, the 1980s in East Germany and the present day. They never meet, yet their lives mirror one another. Mascha Schilinski recounts these hundred years not chronologically, but as an associative stream of memories. The film reveals that the violence inflicted on these girls does not stem from isolated individuals, but is embedded in social structures. It also shows how trauma that has never been overcome is passed down from one generation to the next, until no one remembers where it originated.

The film is also a remarkable formal achievement. The camera moves close to the characters’ faces, while sound and editing weave the different periods together. The language also changes over the decades: in the earliest sequences, the characters speak Low German (Plattdeutsch). The film is carried by four young actresses who never reduce their characters to mere victims. Awarded the Jury Prize at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, In die Sonne schauen was submitted as Germany’s entry for the Academy Awards and won ten German Film Awards in 2026, including the Golden Lola for Best Feature Film. Recommended for viewers aged 16 and over.

Reviews

“A mysterious and uncanny prose-poem of guilt, shame and yearning.” – The Guardian

“A dizzying sensory exploration of the labyrinth of collective memory.” – Cahiers du Cinéma

“Rarely has a film conveyed our own sense of estrangement with such power.” – Le Monde

“A film you will never forget.” – Süddeutsche Zeitung

German original version with French subtitles. This film is presented in cooperation with the University of Liège and with the kind support of the German Embassy in Brussels.

Introduction in German and French by Jeremy Hamers, Professor of Documentary Film and Media Literacy at the University of Liège, and Claus Telge, Lecturer in German Language and Literature at the University of Liège.

Admission is free, but registration is required: claus.telge@uliege.be